Ping, ping, ping. New messages keep popping up in my email box, many of them from various nonprofits. (Silly me, I can’t resist signing all those petitions; an apparently effective way for nonprofits to capture names and email addresses.)

No way am I going to read all of these. I’m usually looking for a reason to delete them unopened. No problem! Few of their subject lines offer any real temptation, typically because they’re either too boring or too strident.

At the boredom end, I received one today titled, “Watch this video!” To which I can only answer, “Why should I?” My Facebook friends already offer heaps of videos to watch. (Did you see the one with the cat that . . . never mind.) Anyway, a video is not the novelty it may have once been. (More specifics might have helped. At least tell me whether there’s a cat in it.)

At the stridency end, one organization whose list I remain on only out of a morbid curiosity to see when its desperate, demanding messages will sink it, uses subject lines like, “The Good Donors Have Signed Up. Who Are You?” and “I Am Really Tired of All This Fundraising Every Month” and “Our Worst Day of Fundraising Ever.” (Need I say more?)

Being on a nonprofit’s list means that I see its email messages not in isolation, but as an ongoing indication of its personality. Having a personality can be a good thing for a nonprofit. But I wonder whether they always intend the personality that’s coming across in the incessant drumbeat of email pings?

Among Ilona’s most memorable experiences were passing out HIV+ literature in Guatemala, researching U.N programs as a legal intern for Amnesty International in London, and representing (pro bono) disabled, low-income people seeking Social Security benefits in Washington, DC.